The Middle of the Growing Season

We’re entering the middle of the growing season, with some plants ready for harvest and others waiting to go into the ground. We’ve had a constant supply of salad leaves, radishes, mizuna, land cress, cornsalad, and other treats for some time now. Now the summer is here, we’re looking forward to our main crops. In addition to the staple offerings like potato, onion, and broad beans, we’re waiting for some of the other classic crops to bear fruit for us.

We’ve extended beyond the original planting plan from our last article, adding a couple more no dig beds where we cleared space. We’ve also made more use of interplanting, and added some perennial plants like Taunton Deane kale and some members of the Chenopodium family like fat-hen and Mexican tree spinach. We’ve even managed to cultivate some more exotic plants like galangal, and next year we’ll be attempting ginger.

Our only failure so far has been turnips, which didn’t have a deep enough layer of compost to keep them fed. The end result is that the plants bolted before producing full sized turnips. That wasn’t a dead loss though, as we had quite a lot of meals from the leaves, and the chickens were happy to eat the plants even though the roots were inedible and woody.

It’s probably easier to show some photographic highlights than to explain things in writing, so have a look at the gallery below to see what we’re up to.

The tomato plants in our self watering system are starting to bear fruit. The water butt needs to be refilled at least once a week.

The tomatoes really are doing very well with the constant water supply. I’ve removed the lower leaves to improve ventilation and reduce the chance of mould.

The first Sub Arctic plenty tomatoes are bearing fruit.

Three types of carrot, more beans and kale, and some spare tomato plants are taking the space in these beds.

Most of the peas are being left to grow, although some do get picked as petit pois.

Thinning out the carrots doesn’t mean waste. These can be used in a number of ways.

Peas, beans, purple broccoli, and kale are all doing well, but the turnip plants bolted because of inadequate compost depth.

We added an extra bed at the side of the shed door, with some interesting herbs and plants like wood spinach.

There were so many squash plants left over that we added an extra bed to the left side of the shed entrance.

This is fat hen. It’s technically a weed, but we’re leaving it to grow because it’s an edible that tastes just like spinach. It’s in the same family as the Mexican tree spinach we planted by the side of the shed.

Kale is the plant that just keeps giving. Pick a few leaves at a time, and 24 hours later there are more leaves ready to pick.

We’ve had several harvests of kale, purple broccoli, and broad beans already.

We have plenty of salad leaves in the ground around the squash plants.

Marrows are forming.

Rhubarb is being picked every couple of weeks, and is either eaten or frozen for future use.

The chilli peppers are growing, with the first tiny hint of chillis forming.

Raspberries are coming along, but these bushes generally bear fruit later in the year.

The first strawberries are starting to ripen in the troughs on the side of the shed.

It looks like we will have a bumper crop of blackberries.

We have our first harvests of Gherkins, with more coming every few days.

The Borlotti beans are coming along nicely. They will be dried to preserve them.

Cucumbers in the self watering system are getting to a decent size now

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